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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (317057)	12/23/2006 10:04:42 AM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 1574091

Interesting. I think a sensible way to define the middle class is to take a basket of goods and services that an average size family need to live in the US for 1 year and then price it out. Then define the middle class to be something like anyone who earns that much on the bottom end to 100% times that much on the top end. So if it takes $50K for an average family to live in the US for 1 year. Then the middle class would be defined at $50K-$100K in income. Of course, as inflation occurs that range moves. But then you could measure the income gap and rising disparities between rich and poor and middle class, fairly easily. This is typically how these studies are done anyway and the numbers show that the rich are getting rich must faster under Bush's taxation policies than is good for this country. Some things Bush and his friends do I agree with. For example, the Republican leaning members in the FCC recently ruled in favor of opening up competition in TV service to the telcos by trying to simplify franchising rules. Things like that I am all for. Increased competition is good for the consumer, which means it benefits the masses, including the poor and middle class. But taxation has to be very carefully thought out, because it has the most power to change the distribution of wealth so that money and power gets concentrated in the hands of a very few. And that is bad for this country's Democracy.

To: longnshort who wrote (317057)	12/27/2006 2:11:31 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574091

"Reynolds continues by telling of a 2004 story in The Washington Post titled, 'The Vanishing Middle-Class Job.' The Post article pointed out that in 1967, nearly a quarter (22.3 percent) of households made between $35,000 and $49,999 in inflation-adjusted terms, but that that share was down to 15 percent by 2003. "Reynolds notes that the same article showed that the percentage of U.S. households with a real income higher than $50,000 rose from 24.9 percent in 1967 to 44.1 percent in 2003. Moreover, the percentage with income lower than $35,000 fell from 52.8 percent to 40.9 percent. In other words, the 'middle class' was shrinking because people were moving out of the Post's statically defined middle class into a higher income class." -- David R. Henderson, writing on "What's Really Happening in the Economy?" Wednesday in Tech Central Station at www.tcsdaily.com Too bad.......Reynolds and Henderson have been debunked: dev.siliconinvestor.com